Archive for July, 2017

During AACTE’s membership renewal season, some of our most active members are sharing what AACTE means to them. Learn more about membership here.

When I first became involved with AACTE, I could not have imagined the influence the organization would have on my career nor the scope of opportunities to contribute to the professional landscape that would follow. For me and so many others, AACTE is like the ceiba, or the tree of life, with deep roots that anchor the profession and a large canopy that sustains myriad resources.

My relationship with AACTE has been a long time in the making, beginning with nascent engagement as a doctoral student in the Holmes Scholars Program. I participated in the first summer policy institute for the Holmes Scholars, organized back then by the Holmes Partnership, George Washington University, and AACTE. That single experience set me on a path toward a wonderful career as a scholar advocate.

Thanks to several brand-new sessions and revamped activities throughout the original program, next month’s regional AACTE Quality Support Workshop will deliver an even more robust program than its popular predecessor. During the event August 10-12 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, participants will choose from two dozen expert-facilitated workshops offered in seven time blocks – with topics such as interpreting candidate assessment data, mapping curricula to competency indicators, preparing evidence for an accreditation visit, recruiting and supporting more diverse candidates, and others.

Many of the sessions from last spring’s southern regional workshop, held in Fort Worth, Texas, will run again in Minneapolis with few changes. Others are bringing in new facilitators or making adjustments to reflect feedback from attendees (the organizers do try to practice what they preach about using data for improvement!).

Have you seen the JTE Insider blog managed by the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) editorial team? Check out the following interview with authors of a recent article. This blog is available to the public, and AACTE members have free access to the articles themselves in the full JTE archives online – just log in with your AACTE profile here.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute for Education Sciences (IES) has released a series of on-demand webinars to assist prospective grantees in completing applications for the Fiscal Year 2018 grant cycle.

Some webinars provide viewers with general guidance on the grant application process, while others are more specific to particular grant programs. After viewing a webinar, potential applicants can e-mail IES with any questions they might have that weren’t addressed during the webinar.

In addition to the general-topic webinars, the IES archive currently contains information on five grant opportunities; another five are said to be coming soon. Each webinar’s archive includes a video recording, PowerPoint slides, and a transcript.

Last week, the Committee for Education Funding (CEF) released its annual “Budget Book” analysis of the president’s federal spending proposal and its impact on education programs. This year’s report presents detailed narrative, charts, and tables illustrating concerns about President Donald J. Trump’s proposed cuts to education funding for Fiscal Year (FY) 2018. CEF highlighted the findings at a Capitol Hill briefing featuring practitioners from several states and various education sectors.

At the briefing, panelists from Missouri, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and New Jersey all urged for education spending to be increased. Several speakers noted that even “level-funding” a program amounts to a cut when factors such as cost-of-living and other inflation-related expenses are considered, and they advocated for funding increases to permit at least the continuation of current programming.

CEF Deputy Executive Director Sarah Abernathy pointed out that education-related expenses account for only 2% of all federal spending – far short of the 5% called for in CEF’s “Five Cents Makes Sense” campaign. She highlighted components of the report, which called the president’s education cuts “devastating” and noted that the budget is more than $6 billion below FY 2010 education spending levels, proposing cuts that are far deeper than in any of the previous five administrations.

The AACTE Advisory Council of State Representatives (ACSR) seeks nominations by October 13 of state chapter leaders to run in an election for the ACSR Executive Committee. The positions open for election are the South Region representative, Midwest Region representative, and ACSR chair-elect, all to take office in March 2018.

Have you seen the JTE Insider blog managed by the Journal of Teacher Education (JTE) editorial team? Check out the following interview with authors of a recent article. This blog is available to the public, and AACTE members have free access to the articles themselves in the full JTE archives online – just log in with your AACTE profile here.

An education subcommittee in the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing June 28 on “Exploring Opportunities to Strengthen Education Research While Protecting Student Privacy.” Throughout the hearing, hosted by the House Education and the Workforce Committee’s Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, witnesses stressed the need to maintain a balance between safeguarding sensitive student data and allowing researchers access to information that evaluates performance and determines best practices.

Anonymizing the data in order to maintain student privacy was a top concern for the panelists, but Nathaniel Schwartz from the Tennessee Education Department noted that guidelines outlining proper procedures for doing so are lacking at the federal level, leaving states and districts to determine how best to handle the data.

On behalf of AACTE, I recently attended the annual National Forum on Education Policy of the Education Commission of the States (ECS), a national organization of state education policy leaders. The more than 550 attendees at the forum included governors, state education chiefs, chairs of state legislatures’ education committees, and higher education executives, many of whom were new to their position. In fact, one of my main takeaways from the conference was the high level of recent turnover in states’ positions for education decision makers – and the associated need for educators to maintain outreach efforts to connect with them.

Over the past 2 years, there has been drastic leadership change for state legislators, chief state school officers, and governors. In 2016, elections were held for 86 of the 98 partisan state legislative chambers and for 6 of the 13 elected chief state school officers. Furthermore, the average tenure of a chief state school officer is approximately 2½ years. In 2017, 36 states will hold elections for their governors, at least 16 of which must be new due to term limits.

UPDATE: The Department has extended the deadline to submit comments on federal regulations. Those who would like to do so now have until September 20.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Regulatory Reform Task Force has released a progress report identifying more than 150 regulations and 1,700 pieces of guidance for review, and now the public is invited to comment on the items by August 21.

The task force, which originated from an executive order signed in February by President Donald J. Trump to reduce regulatory burdens, will now further review the regulations and guidance and develop recommendations on whether to repeal, modify, or keep them.